3 The American Common School Period

FONTS

The Morrill Act

• 1862, The Morrill Act, also known as the Land-Grant College Act, gave federal land to establish colleges in every state.
• Provide practical education in agriculture and home economics.
• Many well known universities began as land grant colleges.
• A second Morrill Act in 1890 expanded the system.

The American Common School Period

(1840-1880)

Common Schools

One reason for the improvement in educational opportunity and quality was the influence of the Horace Mann.

• The first public state-supported schools.
• Same public education to people from different levels of society.

Normal Schools

• Hope that through teacher training, all schools would become normalized, or similar to each other to improve quality.
• To gain entrance, applicants had to take a test to show they had been properly educated.

The McGuffey's Readers

African American Education

• Textbooks became much more widely available during this time.
• Reverend William Holmes McGuffey was asked to write a textbook series on reading for primary students- McGuffey's Readers.
• Moral Lessons, reading and spelling
• Biology, literature, speech, proper behavior

• Before the Civil War very few enslaved African Americans were able to read and write. Most who learned did so in secret.
• Laws prohibited education of African Americans in the south.
• Not many African American schools existed.

• 1840s- The Oregon Trail was opened- the only practical route for people to emigrate from Independence, Missouri to the Western US.
• 1850s- Country moved closer to the internal split of the Civil War.
• 1860s- The Civil War claimed many lives in both the North and the South.
• Most American children received minimal schooling, if they received any at all. By the end of the period, education- including free public education was much more widely available.

Horace Mann

School Curriculum

The Role of Teachers

• Served as the first secretary of the State Board of Education in Massachusetts.
• Mann worked hard to establish free, public education for every boy and girl in Massachusetts.
• Successfully advocated the establishment of free libraries.
• Mann believed the schools should be nonsectarian as taxpayer dollars were the schools source of funding.

Kindergarten

• After the Civil War, there was a real effort made by many to improve educational opportunities.
• Northern churches sent missionaries to the South to start schools.
• First African American colleges were founded, including Howard University and Spellman College for women.

• Most children were educated at home or in small county schoolhouses where one teacher taught all grades.
• Teachers were paid by community members.
• Teachers trained in normal schools were better prepared to teach.
• People had high expectations of teachers.
• More women enrolled in normal schools and entered the teacher profession. This provided an opportunity to make their own living.

• Friedrich Forebel, a German educator, developed the idea of kindergarten. Public schools began to offer kindergarten programs in the 1870s.
• Believed young children learned best through play.
• Songs and games were used in school.
• Educators and parents noticed the success of his methods and are still the foundation of what you see in kindergarten today.

Many of these efforts were short-lived.

All were hampered by the fact that most schools remained strictly segregated.

African American schools lacked the funds to provide a truly equal education for those who attend.